


I see you behind my closed eyes, who's there to remind me you're not?

by EverTurningVinyl



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depressed Ikari Shinji, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Post-episode e24, References to Depression, Rei has empathy, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverTurningVinyl/pseuds/EverTurningVinyl
Summary: A small oneshot where Shinji reaches out to Rei via phone during a depressive episode. Mention of Kaworu’s Death
Relationships: Ayanami Rei/Ikari Shinji/Souryuu Asuka Langley if you squint, Ikari Shinji/Nagisa Kaworu, Implied Ayanami Rei/Ikari Shinji, Past relationship - Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	I see you behind my closed eyes, who's there to remind me you're not?

The bathroom light was glaring and cold.

Shinji could feel the fuzzy imprints of it on his corneas as much with his eyes close as open.

He had spent the last hour doing that.

He had come into his room as soon as he could politely excuse himself from Misato’s dinner. He was tired, but not sleepy. So he ended up on lying on the ground, between his room and the bathroom, eyes focusing and unfocusing on the ceiling, mind clear of any complicated cognition. The ground was cold.

He didn’t need to think to do this, and after a day of Nerv people asking him to think and process about everything, he needed to just lie on cold ground and not be forced to feel anything more complicated than boredom.

A recent development in his duty to the Evas - the inability to feel anything for months at a time, not even the brand of domestic happiness he needed to smile or wave back at someone he passed in the streets. Until, at least about once a month, usually alone in his room, he would feel so crushingly overwhelmed, that it was just so much, to the point he wouldn’t be able to move for hours on end.

He remembered being confused, concerned even, when he met Rei.

Properly, not counting their traumatic first meeting, when they talked later on. 

He had the belief that he understood how bad the job would be, that there must be something unwell with her to be so quietly traumatized.

But then he would remember her on the dolly, her body groaning in protest as she tried to get up, arms and torso shaking with pain.

His father’s apathetic stare overviewing the both of them.

But he couldn’t understand how she wasn’t able to cry, or scream, at the total despair in the form of their enemies.

Nerv’s enemies.

How she wasn’t filled to burst with the nervous, terrified energy that haunted him. 

That first time he spent in the Eva, every part of him thought he was going to die.

He felt the adrenaline pumping through his bones telling him to fight, to hold his own, but then when it came to it, was paralyzed with the fear.

The angels were Lovecraftian in their horror. They triggered something instinctual frightened in him.

He was certain at first that he could never possibly get into that pod without that fight-or-flight response.

At least he was proven wrong.

He wished he hadn’t been wrong.

Wished so very much he hadn’t been wrong.

He wanted to feel things casually again.

Everything in his life was do or die, and it was draining him faster than he could recuperate.

He missed smiling for no real reason. He could still remember what it was like.

Like that golden first time he had seen Tokyo-3 position itself above ground, with the humming of it, and the awed, senseless joy he felt as the city ground roared upwards thunderously, the vibrations skittering under his feet.

It was beautiful.

And so unexpected he had felt pained by the joy.

The unexpectedness of it had just torn down his defenses, and before he knew it he was grinning

He felt sure in that moment that beautiful things were the only things worth longing for. Things that are impartial to their surroundings and just as eternal, unable to change their nature, just like the city as it soared into the sky, with every last one of it’s components having a purpose to be there.

Every slab of metal being needed, having it’s exact place and job to fulfill, regardless of circumstance.

Withstanding time, and pure in their purpose. 

Like him.

He curled up in on himself more, the pain of recalling him causing his face to scrunch in pain.

Didn’t want to feel that, didn’t want to think about him.If he didn’t need to, he wasn’t going to.

He made a decision, he had to live with it.

That’s what Misato said. 

It was his own fault. He was the one who decided to do this. But why did that bastard have to understand. Why did he have to encourage him. Why couldn’t he have been an asshole at the end, made it easier.

Why did he look him in the eye, and say it was okay.

He wondered a lot, if he was going to spend his entire life regretting that one moment. Wondered how he was supposed to live the rest of his life under the shadow of that kind of choice.

How could anyone bear closing their eyes when those sort of things were there to greet them.

He was clenching his hands hard enough to shake, and left small nail-crescents his palm.

It was either he would spend the next hour falling into this loop, as far too many nights had been spent, or he would get up.

With lethargy, he shifted onto his hand and knees, then to his feet.

He should sleep. They had a synchronisation test tomorrow.

Though it wasn’t as if he could do worse than Asuka at this stage. He hadn’t talked to her about it, but he had heard Dr. Ritsko and Misato mutter about her over the phone with a sense of urgency.

He needed his pills, he thought hazily, stumbling into the bathroom.

It was impossible for him to sleep without pills anymore. But, then again, at least pills still worked. Misato used to take them, but in the past few months, he had often come into the kitchen in the morning to find Misato playing video games or reading, and knew from the tussle of her hair and the film in her eyes that she had never gone to bed in the first place.

But both of them had a silent agreement that lasted well enough to never talk about each other’s issues at home.

Or rather, Shinji thought resentfully to not talk about _his_ issues until he wasn’t working at a high enough efficiency for her.

Now that he had thought about him, Kaworu wouldn’t leave his mind. He stared at his bathroom mirror reflection with apathy and brought his hands in front of his face. No matter how many times he had washed his hands, or showered in cold water, over and over again, he could still feel the blood, greasy and dirty, under his skin.

The aftermath immediately after… it… was seared into him, the agony laced into him, melding into his sense of self. It was still traumatic enough to make him start shaking if he fixated on it.

The crunch was sickening.

At first he had sat there in the loudest silence he had ever experienced, his disbelief keeping him still, clutching his head between his legs. Trying not to lose it.

But the longer he sat there, in what could only have been a couple of minutes, the reality of it registered in the back of his mind, and he began to scream.

When his throat had began to croak hoarsely, he returned to his silence, and stared at the blood seeping out of the Eva’s hand.

Slowly, painfully so, he had lowered what was left to the ground.

He didn’t rush getting out. He knew he was dead.

A small crowd had already gathered, white coats and morticians. But, hearing him stagger up, they had looked at each other with a mutual understanding and stood back. Only Ritsuko laid a hand on his shoulder before he went any farther.

“You made the right decision, Shinji” She said in a low voice, but the words didn’t register.

He had bent before him, head to where his torso used to be, hands grasping at the remaining tatters of his shirt that had survived. Screaming, shouting as if that would let him hear, then whispering, silently crying into him his name, and mumbled directionless apologies.

“…sorry, I’m sorry Kaworu I’m so sorry”

He cried until there was nothing left to cry, and sat there, dry-heaving until he felt arms firmly pulling him away, around his waist. He didn’t protest, just slumped away, and fell onto his haunches. He was so tired. Rei-because it had been Rei-came around front of him, and just held his bloodied hands, looked at him with the closest he had ever seen to pity in her eyes. She made the first move, leaning in and holding him fast as he rocked, sobbing. No one tried to separate them, or pull him away any further. She didn’t say anything, didn’t expect him to say anything, just let her arms envelop him in silence.

He twisted open the bottle and looked at the contents with disinterest.

There had to be at least a hundred of them. He could toss them all down within two minutes. He noticed the thought doesn’t make him feel scared. It might’ve made him scared a month ago.

He can’t sleep like this.Or doesn’t want to.

He sighs, real frustration in his voice, putting the bottle back where it was.

He rummaged in his sweatpants pockets, pulling out his phone. He wasn’t sure why Misato had gotten him it, he only had three contacts. Her, Asuka, and Rei.

It was always a guarantee Rei was still up. She always answered, always with the same tone no matter the time of day or night. He wondered if she just lived in that constant state of exhaustion.

The line trilled, and he settled on his bed-edge.

He nibbled at the same spot of his lip he had abused all the past week. He felt a small bead of blood well up, his lip skin giving way.

He raised his now bloody index finger in front of him. A shudder ran through his spine, at the same time Rei’s line was connected. There was a silence that conveyed something abstract between them.

Rei gave way first.

“Shinji?” She murmured, a question in a word.

“It’s playing over in my mind.” He didn’t have to specify, she was there to see the small undamaged part of him permanently crack when it happened.

The event had managed to break through to some new level of psychological trauma the rest of his time at Nerv somehow hadn’t managed to yet.

His voice wavered slightly, but he continued through his hesitance. “I keep wanting to die. Does that ever stop?” But his voice was riddled with the rhetoric of the question. He knew the answer before she said it, so why’d he bother asking?

“No, not really.” She murmured. There was a moment of shuffling on the end of the line, as if she was deciding whether or not to say something. “It’s better if you try to think from someone else’s perspective. Then it distances it from yourself” She said, with a trace of first-hand sadness in her voice. But the words came to him like they were being whispered at 100 paces, in that he hardly heard them at all. He had a question pressing at his mind that while some conscious part of him told him he shouldn’t say, the impulsive part of him wouldn’t shut up about. First thought, best thought. He spoke into the receiver, breaking the informal silence.

“Rei, do you think if we died anyone would miss us for any reasons not Nerv related?”

He didn’t hear anything but her slow breathing as her answer was put together.

“I’m only alive because I have Nerv’s purpose to follow. So the thought doesn’t bother me particularly-that anyone else wouldn’t miss me for anything else. But in objective terms, I think Asuka loves both of us if her pride ever fell enough for her to admit it.”

Her words were like cold water. He felt awake and sure of every word she had said.

When she got no answer forthcoming from the line she said

“Shinji? You still there?”

He rested the phone on his forehead momentarily. He wished he could just listen to her speaking for hours on end about anything. Her cadence was smooth and mezzo enough to make him want to fall asleep to it.

“Yeah, still here.” He responded. “Can I ask you something Rei?” He said a moment later, and his voice was so wholly childish and vulnerable, Rei knew better than to say anything other than

“Sure”

“Could you just… talk on the line until I go to sleep? Until the pills kick in I mean.” He crossed back into the bathroom, and picked back up the pill bottle again, looking at it.

Though he couldn’t see it, Ayanami Rei smiled, miniscully, on the other side of the line.

“Sure” She said again, softly this time. “What would you like me to talk about?”

“Do you still have any of those English poems we had to memorize for school memorized” He asked, unscrewing the bottle and tapping three pills out.

“I still remember the Oscar Wilde one, the one about the prisoner.”

Ah, he remembered that one. The sad one.

He threw the pills back dry.

“I think I remember that one.” He murmured, walking back out of the bathroom.

He suddenly felt very tired. Not from the pills, it was far too soon for them to be kicking in yet. It was more like he had satisfied something inside his mind, and was now _allowed_ to be tired, for lack of a better phrase. He climbed on-top of his bed only somewhat awkwardly, and laid the phone on his pillow, waiting with something like the buzzing anticipation of being read a story to sleep.

“Are you ready?” She asked, her voice calm.

“I’m ready.” He breathed, his voice not.

Her voice spoke, sure as the ocean bed, clear and dictional.

“He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,”

Shinji felt the tingle of his muscles relaxing into the bed.

“And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,”

Who did he love. Who love him.

Why was it painful to ask those questions.

Kaworu, Rei, Asuka, they all blended together.

I love you Shinji

I like you Shinji

I hate you Shinji

“And murdered in her bed.”

He forgot how sad this poem was. He thought Wilde was one of those perpetually happy English people that only wrote about the beauty of ancient greek gardens.

It was unfair to ask a dead person to only fit your memory of them.

It was unfair to ask a living person to only fit your memory of them.

Maybe he was drifting away a little. His thoughts were losing conscious direction a little.

He had missed this warm feeling that comes a little before sleep. When all your thoughts echo around your skull but never fully land, and the pillow seems to be the most comforting thing you’ve ever rested on. And all the while, Rei’s voice was there, not quite in the background, not quite in the foreground.

His consciousness was ebbing like waves, only coming back in to her voice.

“And I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

That prisoners call the sky”

**Author's Note:**

> I may have been a little angsty when I wrote this.  
> Comments mean everything, please leave critiques or comments :)


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